"Hollywood Mayor" Looks to Move Up — And Out of Newark

Newark mayor Cory Booker couldn't wait a week. NJ Governor Jon Corzine was just voted out in an widely-reported odd-year race that was more about suburban control of the state than about taxes, Wall Street, corruption, or any of the issues that Republican challenger "Krispy Kreme" Christy pushed.

The media-hungry mayor hastened to disassociate himself from the fellow Democrat that he had supposedly been supporting--and also to throw his own hat into the ring for the next gubernatorial race. This is pretty clear evidence that he's going to spend the next four years running instead of governing.

Cory "Hollywood" Booker has a lot of incentive to run for state-wide office. Not least is the fact that he's reduced nearly all his bridges in Newark to smoking wrecks. He lies--repeatedly and blatantly--at every public appearance.

At this year's Labor Day March in Newark, he represented himself as a "friend of labor" at the rally to the very unions he's attempted to bust (while trying to upstage US Congressman Donald Payne -an actual "friend of labor"-- who was the parade's Grand Marshal). His most repeated claim is to be pro-education as he destroys city public schools in favor of charter-schools owned by political contributors. He professes to support citizens against greedy and corrupt businesses, while turning off tenants' water because their landlords had unpaid water-bills and taxes (see The Community Fights "Hollywood" Booker Over Right to Water… Newark Wins!).

And all the while, Cory Booker maintains that, as mayor, he has reduced street-crime.

This is, perhaps, the biggest lie of them all. Anyone who actually lives in Newark has witnessed the ever-increasing levels of street-violence. Booker has allowed his Giuliani-esque police force to run amok in the neighborhoods. The sharpest single example of the anti-community policies carried out by Police Director Gary McCarthy, an NYC transplant, is the police murder this past May of Basire Farrell. Farrell was beaten to death by Newark police while in handcuffs.

Defenders of McCarthy's police policies insist that neighborhood residents who'd witnessed the beat-down "had to be lying" because they claimed that the cops used tasers. "Stun guns are not standard issue in Newark." As though they are not for sale to anyone with a badge at cop shops down on Williams Street or anywhere in the state.

Last Saturday saw a rain-soaked march to the 5th Precinct on Bigelow Street, called by Mr. Farrell's aunt, Sharonda Smalls. It was far broader than simply a demand for justice for her nephew. Ms. Smalls reached out to families of other victims of police brutality, as well as the People's Organization for Progress (of which she is a member) and other community-based groups.

"We're all family," Ms. Smalls said. "The moment you hear the horrifying news about a loved one, you become a member of my family." She went on to talk about the many neighborhood residents who've suffered at the hand of the local police. But Smalls also broadened the issue beyond the precinct and even Newark, when she expanded the battle by talking about Amar McLean who was handcuffed and then "shot in the back, execution-style" by deputies of the Essex County Sheriff's Department..

"The 5th Precinct has a reputation for arrested suspects never making it to the station house," Lawrence Hamm, POP's chairman said. "This has got to stop! This is Newark, 2009 -- not Montgomery in the 1950s."

"We need to hold elected officials accountable for what happens on their watch," New Black Panther Party spokesman Zayid Muhammad said. "And if Cory Booker can be reelected after this, the shame is on us!"

The broader lesson is very clear. Cory "Hollywood" Booker is interested in Newark as a stepping-stone to state-wide or even national office, and that's all. His "tough love" policies are designed to polish his image at the expense of Newark residents. Because he's young, photogenic and well-spoken, folks like Oprah Winfrey have taken to him and are promoting him as a kind of "America's Mayor," Rudy Giulani-style.

And we can't forget the other thing besides name recognition that campaign for high office in this country requires. Money. Lots of money. And Cory Booker has the closest thing you can get to a public money-laundering scheme without winding up in jail. Here's how it works: well-meaning out-of-towners, following Oprah's example, donate money to help provide better schools for Newark. Booker takes their money and directs it to privately-owned, for-profit charter schools owned by campaign contributors. These folks turn around and make fat contributions to Booker's electoral war-chest.

It is our responsibility in Newark to stop Cory "Hollywood" Booker's climb to power--on our backs--right here and now. We have to expose his money-laundering schemes and the policies he promotes because they look good to well-meaning NJ suburbanites. And we have to fight for our own needs and interests, because he sure won't be doing it.

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Visiting Harpers Ferry after 47 years…

My friend Jon, who often provides the photos I employ to illustrate the Black NJ series of postings, wrote about his recent trip with his 83 year-old father to Harpers Ferry. Fire on the Mountain blog-site founder, Jimmy Higgins suggested that we may want to publish this, so (with Jon's permission) his reflections on Si and his recent visit to Harpers Ferry follow:

by Jon Levine

John Brown's "Fort", below the railroad right-of-way at the intersection of Shenandoah and Potomac Streets.

Visiting Harpers Ferry after 47 years? No, not me. My family, my union sisters & brothers, my comrades and other friends all know that I try and make Hajj down to the Ferry as often as possible. Whether I'm driving to Florida on union business, heading to DC for a conference or a demonstration, or on my way to the Black Workers for Justice annual Martin Luther King "Salute to Labor" dinner, if I'm driving, Harpers Ferry is nearly always along the way.

But this year, when I decided to head randomly south I also decided to reprise the old tradition of taking my father along (traveling with my dad, Si, is something we did for a few years right after he retired). And the last time Si was in Harpers Ferry was probably around 1962 or so. Back then the US was commercializing the Civil War, selling little blue or grey "forage caps" for children to dress like Union or CSA troops. Family trips to Gettysburg, Antietam, Harpers Ferry and other relatively closeby Civil War battlefields were part of the new and rising US highway culture (and yes, at the time this industrial town at juncture of the Shenandoah and the Potomac Rivers was mainly *supposed* to be remembered for Stonewall Jackson's 1862 victory).

So what's different after nearly half-a-century? I'd noticed a few of these things in the twenty-or-so years I've been making pilgrimage, but seeing the differences from Si's perspective after 47 years was particularly instructive. Obviously John Brown and the Kennedy Farmhouse Raiders has taken on greater significance this year, the Sesquicentennial of Brown's raid. But the relatively new exhibit on Storer College and the Niagara Movement, on W.E.B. DuBois, as well the exhibit about freedmen and slaves in Harpers Ferry impressed my dad. Si was interested to see that the Black population of Harpers Ferry at the time of Brown's raid was approximately 50% freedmen, making the "paradox" that the first townie to die in the raid was a free African-American railroad worker relatively inevitable rather than "ironic", which is how other exhibits choose to describe the incident.

But for me, these newer exhibits had been there for awhile, I've seen them before. No, I found one small new element not only interesting, but instructive. There is an obelisk on the rise near the railroad bridge marking the original location of "John Brown's Fort." (I've always had a problem with this description of the fire-pump storage facility where Brown and the remaining raiders took refuge, maybe going back to my first visit in the early '60s, but that's another matter). My biggest problem was that the location of that firehouse always felt wrong. I knew that it had been moved more than once (to the grounds of Storer College, to the Columbian Exhibition in Chicago, back to Storer, later destroyed, and eventually recreated. Yes, I knew all that, but the location below the railroad right-of-way always felt somehow WRONG, both as a pump-house and (more importantly) as the location Brown would choose for a "last stand."

Militarily, we would expect Brown to choose a less isolated spot as he attempted to cross the river into the highlands (and yes, Brown was a fairly masterful tactician, as earlier events in Kansas had shown). Now the monument on the rise, placing that as the original site of the firehouse may have been there before, but I didn't see it 'til this visit. It made sense, it answered some nagging questions and so I, too, learned something new…

Monument at the original "pump-house" site, on the rise above the present recreated location…

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Revolutionary Recipes: Mao's Red Braised Fatty Pork

[This inaugurates a new FotM series highlighting recipes associated with various revolutionary figures. I’ve only got a couple lined up, so I hope readers will chip in with their own favorites, or at least suggest some, or this will be a pretty short-lived feature.]

We’ll start with a recipe associated with Chairman Mao Zedong. Hong shao rou--red braised fatty pork--is reputed to have been among his favorite dishes, one he ordered before major combat, asserting that that he’d never lost a battle when fed on hong shao rou. It is also regarded in Hunan Province, where Mao grew up, as brain food.

Hunanese cooks traditionally leave the skin intact for maximum succulence (read: fat), and cut the meat into rather large chunks, perhaps 1 1/2 inches long. This recipe takes its color from caramelized sugar, which gives it a lovely reddish gloss, but many people just use dark soy sauce at home.


1 lb. pork belly (skin optional)
2 tbsp. peanut oil
2 tbsp. white sugar
1 tbsp. Shaoxing wine (or saki)
3/4 in. piece fresh ginger, skin left on and sliced
1 star anise
1 cup chestnuts (preferably real chestnuts-—water chestnuts can be substituted, but have more crunch than flavor)
4 dried red chilies (you can tone this down, although the late Chairman used to joke that the more chili you eat the more revolutionary you become)
a small piece cinnamon stick
shoyu (soy sauce) salt, and sugar
4 scallions sliced

1. Plunge the pork belly into a pan of boiling water and simmer for 3-4 minutes until partially cooked. Remove and, when cool enough to handle, cut into bite-sized chunks.

2. Heat the oil and white sugar in a wok over a gentle flame until the sugar melts, then raise the heat and stir until the melted sugar turns a rich caramel brown. Add the pork and splash in the Shaoxing wine.

3. Add enough water to just cover the pork, along with the ginger, star anise, chiles, and cinnamon. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and simmer for 40-50 minutes.

4. Toward the end of the cooking time, turn up the heat to reduce the sauce, and season with soy sauce, salt, and a little sugar to taste. Add the scallion greens just before serving.

Note: It is purported that vegetarian variations of this recipe can be made using garlic gloves, deep-fried bean curd, preserved mustard greens and water chestnuts as main ingredients. I wouldn't know.

This recipe is adapted from the one in Fuschia Dunlop’s Revolutionary Chinese Cookbook—-she features a picture of a bowl of hong shao rou on the cover.

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Black New Jersey: The community fights "Hollywood" Booker over right to water… Newark Wins!

Wednesday evening, October 21, hundreds of concerned citizens gathered to picket outside the Newark, NJ City Hall and moved the protest into the Council Chambers when the weekly City Council meeting began. Residents were indignant about illegal water terminations that had been going on for months in the city. The massive protest had been organized by a coalition of the People's Organization for Progress, the Newark United Tenants Association, the Newark Water Group, the New Black Panther Party, as well as other concerned community organizations and residents.

These water shut-offs were most surprising to tenants who rely on their landlords to pay the water bill. In a substantial number of cases, residents were up to date in rent (which, according to their lease agreements, includes heat and water) and didn't event know that the landlord hadn't paid the water bill. Likewise, many residents receiving Section-8 housing subsidies have no way of even knowing if their payments are up-to-date. Their caseworkers send paperwork that result in vouchers to landlords who then get money that the welfare recipient never sees. These transactions take place without any "client" involvement, supposedly protecting the money from being misspent. When these tenants have their water turned off, they are clearly blameless.

Like many People's Organization for Progress sponsored demonstrations, this picket and rally began with 30 or so POP & NBPP members and supporters, but these numbers quickly grew to hundreds and hundreds of angry tenants before moving inside to the council chambers. In reaction to this undeniable mass of angry citizens, the Newark City Council was compelled to reverse the draconian water policy. This was truly a people's victory of major magnitude. But a more complicated, deeper and truer analysis must examine the background that allowed this policy to have been enacted in the first place. In many ways, this was (and still is) a government-imposed crisis, and the paper trail leads directly to Mayor Corey Booker's office, but we'll return to this later.

Some Background:
Months ago, a dedicated, young idealistic nurse, whom we'll call Aisha, went on a home visit to an indigent mother with five children and found a nursing nightmare; an apartment with no running water. As Aisha recently explained, the rules community healthcare workers operate under require that she report children living under these circumstances. Had these rules been followed, the next step would have involved the County taking these youngsters away from their mother's care. Aisha is a Newark resident and an active member of the People's Organization for Progress, and this is how POP initially found out about this aspect of Newark's water crisis.

The general issue of the city selling the water supply to outside investors was something with which POP had already become involved. Newark was historically the east coast's Milwaukee because, contrary to popular wisdom, it has some of the best water in the entire country. This is why the breweries for the New York metropolitan area, and much of the east coast were historically located within city limits. Any corporate purchase of Newark's water supply is not simply an attempt to make money from a staple of life that should be guaranteed to all residents, it is an attempt to control the food production industries as well.

The People's Organization for Progress united against prior schemes to sell Newark's water. The current double-billing and shut-offs by by Mayor Corey Booker (Newark's celebrity mayor) to balance the city budget involves attempting to charge residents twice for their water . If the mayor's business administrator doesn't understand that these tenants being penalized don't pay their water bills directly, she certainly doesn't have the business experience her office demands. More likely, Director Thomas is "firing a shot across the bow" of businesses that are delinquent in water payments without hurting those key businesses directly. If so, this is precisely the sort of attack on residents that Corey Booker claimed to be running against when he was first elected mayor.

The battle lines were probably best explained by the protest's organizer, Andrea Hughie chairwoman of POP's Youth Committee. “We discovered many families that receive Section 8 housing vouchers that have been living in homes without water for weeks. These families are already financially compromised and it is disappointed the city of Newark refused to protect the rights of these tenants against the absentee landlords. We rely on city officials to help us, not hurt us." Because sister Hughie reached out to her friends first, "this movement to protect community water was led by young people." Faced with potential charges of money-laundering, Newark's Hollywood Mayor "would agree to anything to avert bad publicity."

But this issue if far from settled. The people's victory at the City Council merely gives tenants a temporary reprieve through the end of the year. "In January," Ms. Hughie informs us, "the water cut-offs may begin again."

Thanks to the chairwoman of the People's Organization for Progress Reparations Committee (and POP photographer) Ingrid Hill for pictures used with this report…

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NJ's People's Organization for Progress Celebrates the 150 Anniversary of John Brown's Heroic Campaign at Harpers Ferry

Dr. William W. Sales, Associated Professor at Seton Hall University, speaks at the October 15th POP meeting

On Thursday, October 15, the day before the Sesquicentennial of the Raid on Harpers Ferry, the People's Organization for Progress acknowledged this important event in African American history with a presentation by Seton Hall Africana Studies professor, Dr. William Sales. Before discussing the Harpers Ferry Raid itself, or John Brown's participation, before explaining the history of the abolitionist movement that Brown came from and became one of the most significant representatives of, Professor Sales began outlining the history of slavery in the United States, and its unique role in creating the wealth that underwrites U.S. capitalism (click here to view a portion of Dr. Sales' speech).

Dr. Sales went on to explain what was unique about John Brown. While many abolitionists of the 1800s opposed slavery, viewing unpaid labor as unfair competition to small farmers because large plantations undercut the influence of homesteading by "free-soilers," John Brown opposed slavery because, in Dr. Sales words, he "loved Black people." He moved his family to settle among free Black families in the community known as Timbuctoo in North Elba, NY. This attitude made Capt. Brown unique among white abolitionists.

And while many 19th century abolitionists viewed battling slavery as a "moral calling," requiring prayer rather than action, Brown had learned in Kansas that the slavers had no qualms about employing violence and terror. Dr. Sales explained that Brown had gone to Kansas after hearing that his son's farm was under murderous attack by the border ruffians. These pro-slavery terrorists came across the border from the slave state of Missouri to try and insure that the Kansas also entered the Union as a slave state. (Later, during the Civil War, many of these same irregular troops joined the special "bushwhacker" units of Confederate Army that burned farms, terrorized civilians and after the war became backbone elements in the Ku Klux Klan.) Units like Quantrill's Raiders, carried out the shelling and burning of Lawrence during the Kansas border wars. Brown played a major role in building the free state resistance in Lawrence.

Dr. Sales explained that Brown became involved out of "a sense of family responsibility, yes, but …because John Brown went to Kansas and fought the bushwhacker terrorists… he slowed down a process by which Kansas was about to be engulfed by pro-slavery sentiment, and by slowing it down, when the Civil War broke out Kansas could come into the war as a free state, a very important intervention on his part."

One cannot understand Brown, Professor Sales added, without grasping why U.S. society needs to portray him as "crazy." Brown was feared because he represented a key thing that both the slaveowners and many whites in the abolitionist movement feared most, a white person who could identify and find true unity with African Americans.

Despite bad weather and limited advanced promotion in the media, this People's Organization for Progress celebration, The Sesquicentennial of the Harpers Ferry Raid and the Legacy of John Brown, drew a sizable crowd. Perhaps, some POP members speculated, word of mouth is more powerful than an "Upcoming Events" listing in the Star Ledger. Perhaps area academics assigning students to attend Dr. Sales' lecture or the use of so-called "new media" like blogs and Facebook by POP members made the difference. No matter the reason, the gathering left POP members and supporters demanding more. POP Chairman Lawrence Hamm has proposed that Dr. Sales return to another meeting simply to have the question-and-answer segment that, due to a lack of time, never occurred. (click here, to see additional photos from this event)

Professor Bill Sales with POP's chairman, Larry Hamm salute John Brown

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From Kirke Mechem's Opera About John Brown

More anent John Brown, as the 150th anniversary of the raid on Harpers Ferry is upon us.

Last year, as part of a continuing focus on music inspired by John Brown, I posted a piece here at FotM on the opera by Kirke Mechem, John Brown, which had just premiered in a performance by the Lyric Opera of Kansas City.

Here is a more recent concert performance of one of the highlights of the opera, "Dan-u-el." Mechem describes it thus:

The scene is based on a real incident. In December 1858, Brown helped a slave family escape to Kansas from Missouri, and then led them to safety into Canada. During that time, the mother gave birth to a boy whom she and her husband named after John Brown.

Some of the words come from the spiritual, "Didn't My Lord Deliver Daniel?"; the others from my libretto. The music is original.

The fact that "Dan-u-el" seems to be entering the repertoire of adventurous modern "classical" pieces performed by college and university chorales is one more small but happy development in the reclaiming of John Brown as one of this country's greatest heroes.

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Open Letter to the World - International Front in Support of the General Strike in Puerto Rico

Open Letter to the World

To: All social, labor/trade union, feminist, environmentalist, and community groups

From: International Front in Support of the General Strike in Puerto Rico
frente.solidaridad@gmail.com and in Facebook “Frente Internacional en Apoyo al Paro (Huelga) en Puerto Rico”

On October 15, 2009, labor unions, students, community associations, progressive religious groups, and environmental organizations have called for a 24-hour strike demanding that the Commonwealth’s Government stop the systematic abuse that for the last 10 months it has subjected all citizens, in particular public-sector workers, poor communities and college students.

With the passing, in March of 2009, of the Fiscal Emergency Law (Law 7 of the Commonwealth), Gov. Luis A. Fortuño and an advisory board of the leading businessmen in Puerto Rico, have launched a “severance plan” that has meant firing more than 20 thousand public-sector workers. The current governor, from the Pro-annexation Party, is imposing the most blatant extreme right neo-liberal model in the history of the country, with the establishment of so-called “Public-Private Partnerships” (Alianzas Publico-Privadas - APP), the privatization of our natural resources and institutions and an unemployment rate of over 17 percent.

On the island we are preparing for a national strike called by the Broad Front for Solidarity and Struggle (Frente Amplio de Solidaridad y Lucha - FASyL), composed of over 30 organizations. The time for action has arrived. In Puerto Rico, class struggle sharpens and the street smells of resistance. We reject the mobilization of the Puerto Rico National Guard (part of the US military) and “Shock Force” (Fuerza de Choque – anti-riot forces) by the police against the workers, who are harassed and harried because constitute the main opposition forces.

Working people in Puerto Rico demand:

1. The repealing of the Fiscal Emergency Law 7 and the APP law and the restitution of all laid off workers.

2. To establish taxes on multinational corporations, and eliminating any benefits enjoyed by these multinationals under the US Federal Internal Revenue Act.

3. The immediate halting of the evictions of working-class and immigrant squatter communities and the halting of the expropriation of poor communities for development projects, and end to the political and military abuses to all, and the recognition of the right to equal housing for all human beings.

As workers of the world we face the same enemy. That's why we call for the solidarity of your organization or collective.

In solidarity,

International Front in Support of the General Strike in Puerto Rico

Let the rich pay for the crisis!
Workers of Puerto Rico in the streets and in struggle!
Let us support the General Strike!
Another world is possible!

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